#YourSecondHome is an appeal from Preganews to bring about little changes in our workplaces to ease the lives of pregnant employees around us and to be empathetic with them

More and more women in India are now working till the last stage of their pregnancy. In fact, most of their working hours are spent in the office. Itâ€™s is an extremely demanding phase in their life both physically and emotionally. Little things such as uncomfortable furniture, nauseating food smell, inaccessibility to a toilet, etc. can really make their life difficult. So it has become really important for our workplaces to be very accommodative for such women in this phase of their life.

Preganews Pregnancy Detection Card, marketed by Mankind Pharmaceuticals, has come out with a campaign #YourSecondHome, to appreciate the fact and generate awareness about the subject at workplaces. The campaign has been conceptualised and executed by ADK Fortune.

The campaign is timed around Motherâ€™s Day and will be supported with other communication stimuli apart from the film. Details of how one can make their offices more pregnancy friendly can be obtained from the Preganews website and Facebook page.

Advertising is evolving and it is for the first time a pregnancy testing brand has chosen a storytelling route, instead of basic celebrity endorsement in any campaign and that is appreciable.

Eshita Goswami, Product Manager, Preganews, Mankind Pharmaceuticals, said, â€śThis is in the recent times that advertising is actually evolved exponentially. Since the time social media has become more important in our lives, people have become more open to ideas and helped creativity. People are able to connect to such ideas and causes and at the end, it helps the brand. Preganews video is picking up because of the idea.â€ť

RC Juneja

Commenting on the campaign, RC Juneja, Chairman, Mankind Pharma, said, â€śPreganews is already the leading brand for quite some time. It now becomes the responsibility of the brand to take up relevant issues concerning pregnancy and how to handle the pregnancy at the workplace, a pertinent issue which we wanted to address. This takes our corporate philosophy of serving lives further.â€ť

The idea of talking to the corporates as the target audience for the campaign came from the agencyâ€™s end. The brief that the client gave was to create a campaign for the brand on the occasion of Motherâ€™s Day.

Akashneel Dasgupta

Akashneel Dasgupta, ECD and Senior VP, ADK, said, â€śWe have all seen this happen around us. How many times have we bothered to spare a thought for her? We do marathon meetings surviving on just biscuits and maybe a glass of water. How difficult it is for a pregnant lady among us, only she knows. We are not expecting radical change, just a little more sensitivity.â€ť

Throwing light on the insight, Dasgupta said, â€śInterestingly, the Preganews brand manager was heavily pregnant till a month back. I remember doing a meeting with her one day and the next day we came to know she has delivered. Earlier women used to take long breaks till the time of delivery. Nowadays, women work till last quarter of their pregnancy and they take a break very close to their delivery. Therefore, we have taken this topic and have tried to spread this message of being sensitive when you have a pregnant woman around.â€ť

The campaign:

The campaign does not only involve a digital film, but the brand has also come up with a website www.yoursecondhome.co.in that talks about dos and donâ€™ts of how companies could make their offices comfortable for pregnant employees and how should colleagues be helpful to their pregnant colleagues.

The website is very interactive. Any company can join the campaign and call Mankind team for workshops at offices for the subject matter.

Dasgupta further said, â€śIndia has a long way to go in this matter. Our offices are not even friendly for disabled people. The way we work is quite archaic. We wanted to convey that our workspaces need to be friendly and a little change is needed.â€ť

The campaign took two to three months to complete. A lot of background work was involved. â€śWe had to approach the government of India to know about the laws for pregnant women. There is a separate PDF on the website, where you can get the laws and rights for pregnant women at workplaces,â€ť added Dasgupta.

The target audience of the campaign are three kinds of people. One is the colleagues and how should they behave with pregnant peers. The second kind of target audience is the CxOs of the companies, who are the decision makers at the office places and the third kind of people are the pregnant women themselves.

Manoj Pillai of Absolut Films, who produced and directed this film, said, â€śIt was a beautiful story that needed to be told in a believable and real manner. The trick was to trigger empathy and not sympathy and hopefully, we have achieved that.â€ť

In earlier times, there were a few Chinese market players in the pregnancy testing segment. It was only in 2009 when Mankind launched Preganews in India. After that Dr Reddyâ€™s also entered this market, followed by iCare.

Generally, a healthcare brand works with the specialised healthcare agency, but Mankind is happy with what ADK produces for the brand. Joy Chatterjee, AGM, Mankind Pharmaceuticals, said, â€śIt is not important from which platform you are getting the idea. It is important which idea you are getting.â€ť

The brand is nowhere placed in the ad until the end. When asked the reason for not placing the brand in the video, Goswami answered, â€śWe wanted people actually to see the cause and then come to the brand.â€ť

The digital film will only be available on the digital medium and the shorter versions of the campaign wonâ€™t be there on television. Mentioning the reason for not carrying the film on television, Chatterjee said, â€śTelevision advertising is an expensive medium. We tried to cut in snippets, but the emotion is not coming.â€ť

The brand intends to come up with three to four videos every year taking up issues related to women, Chatterjee told BestMediaInfo.com.

The film opens with two colleagues sitting in the office discussing cost cuts. One of the colleagues orders the office boy to send something to eat after every half an hour in the meeting room and also asked him to clear Shwetaâ€™s (one of the employees) desk at the office. Other employees keep a check on the exhaust fan and the chair. All of the situations depict Shwetaâ€™s exit from the company. The next morning, Shweta entered the office and was shocked to see her desk empty and was furious by thinking of the timing that his boss chose to evict her from office. A colleague sitting behind asked her to meet the HR downstairs. When she goes down, to her surprise she found a cabin specially for her. Her cabin was all decked up and a feet resting chair was kept for her comfort. She gets overwhelmed with all this. Towards the end, her boss enters and asks her if she is comfortable and to come for the meeting scheduled next and the video ends on a happy note.

Preganews was launched by Mankind in 2009 and then started advertising. Preganews has always used celebrities to endorse the brand. They first started advertising with television actress Neha Marda, then actress Shilpa Shetty and now have Kareena Kapoor on board.

90 per cent of the brandâ€™s advertising budget is allocated to television and rest on print, outdoor and digital. The brand doesnâ€™t advertise on radio. The media buying agency of the brand is Prachar Communications.

On a completely different note, recently, Myntra also came out with a campaign on womenâ€™s pregnancy at workplaces. The film is a tight narrative of two minutes that takes place in a drive after work when Uma, a senior architect drops her pregnant colleague Shaheen (played by Radhika Apte) home. Towards the end, (Shaheen) Apte takes a stand and informs the architect that she has started her own start-up and would not work for a company that doesnâ€™t support her.